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Rolling Stones’ Steel Wheels Tour Stutters, Then Rolls

By Anthony DeCurtis

Anthony DeCurtis

T he Rolling Stones’ ‘ Steel Wheels ‘ tour got off to a somewhat shaky start on August 31st in Philadelphia when, during “Shattered,” the third song of the evening, the entire sound system at Veterans Stadium went dead. Given all the hoopla that had preceded the tour’s kickoff, it was an oddly disconcerting moment.

The Stones and their support musicians milled around confusedly for a time and then left the stage while the crowd — 54,500 strong — which had been whipped up to a froth by the double-barreled shot of “Start Me Up” and “Bitch” that opened the show, remained good-natured, if a tad mystified, by suddenly being left quietly unentertained in the dark. For about five minutes the huge, industrial gray, black and orange stage set — a hulking structure that, in its assemblage of steam pipes, nets, catwalks, stairways and scaffolding, resembled a refinery — loomed forlorn and empty.

Finally, the problem — apparently a blown generator — was resolved. A visibly displeased Jagger offered a terse apology, and the band lit into “Sad Sad Sad,” from Steel Wheels. From that point on, the Stones were in complete control, demonstrating a command of rock essentials that made it clear that this tour, far from being merely a nostalgia-fest or a money grab, would stand proudly on its own contemporary terms. In a move that seemed almost superstitious, however, the Stones dropped “Shattered” from the set the following night in Philadelphia and from subsequent shows in Toronto and Pittsburgh.

That deletion was the only musical change in a set that, through the tour’s first five dates, ranged with idiosyncratic ease through just about every phase of the Stones’ twenty-six-year career. On opening night, following an explosive and well-received fifty-minute set by Living Colour, the Stones took the stage as the sound system blasted out the whirling Moroccan strains of “Continental Drift,” from Steel Wheels, which features the Master Musicians of Joujouka. Fireworks exploded, turrets on the massive stage set shot out flames, an intent Keith Richards cranked out the opening chords to “Start Me Up,” and for the first time in eight years, the Rolling Stones were on the road again.

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It was clear very early on that Mick Jagger was prepared, even determined, to carry the weight of the Stones’ stage show — and to give the lie to the perception that as a live performer, he had sunk irretrievably into self-parody. Decked out in a white shirt, green tails and skintight black pants, Jagger was in superb voice and danced with grace and a flawless sense of the right move for the moment. His arsenal of steps and gestures seemed to be as much derived from ballet, mime and the clubs as from the repertoire that he himself has created as one of the most incendiary showmen in the history of rock. And apart from the half dozen songs on which he played guitar and the time he spent offstage as Richards led the band through “Before They Make Me Run” and “Happy,” the forty-six-year-old Jagger was continually in motion.

Although there seemed to be remarkably little interaction between the two men, Richards seemed to feel that he had Jagger right where he wanted him — that is, fronting the Rolling Stones and doing it with zeal. Consequently, Richards himself was content during the Philadelphia shows to anchor the band, crouching down low and locking in a solid groove with drummer Charlie Watts , sauntering over to bond with his buddy Ron Wood and lending encouragement to this tour’s three auxiliary Stones: saxophonist Bobby Keys and keyboardist Chuck Leavell — both veterans of past Stones tours — and additional keyboardist Matt Clifford.

As usual, Bill Wyman , who is a stately fifty-two, stood stock-still and let his bass generate a fire down below. Three background singers — Lisa Fischer, Bernard Fowler and Cindy Mizelle — are also on board for the Steel Wheels extravaganza. The four-piece Uptown Horns, who played with the band in Philadelphia, will join the party on other selected dates.

The show, which consisted of twenty-eight songs (twenty-seven, of course, on the second night, when “Shattered” was omitted) and ran over two and a half hours, was not short of surprises. A fervent “Undercover of the Night,” with Jagger howling the choruses, a savage “One Hit (to the Body)” and a wonderfully sinuous “Harlem Shuffle” seemed designed to claim credibility for Undercover and Dirty Work , two largely discredited Stones albums of the Eighties. “Sad Sad Sad,” “Mixed Emotions” and “Rock and a Hard Place,” which was accompanied by a rather aimless video, were the only tunes from Steel Wheels that the Stones played, though more songs from the record may be added as the tour continues.

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The band dusted off and streamlined “Midnight Rambler,” the long set piece from Let It Bleed , and rocked it out with surprising conviction. Happily, Jagger refrained from removing his thick leather belt and whipping the stage with it — a staple of Stones shows for too many years — during the song’s ominous midsection.

The evening’s least predictable inclusion — “2,000 Light Years From Home,” a psychedelic souvenir from the Stones’ 1967 album Their Satanic Majesties Request — hit home with unsettling contemporary force. Jagger’s dramatic rendering of the song’s themes of alienation and loneliness seemed to have more to do with modern-day urban living than with the song’s dated lost-in-space scenario.

A brooding version of “Play With Fire,” a ballad from the 1965 album Out of Our Heads, featured evocative folk-style guitar playing by Richards. The eerie barnyard blues of Willie Dixon’s “Little Red Rooster” seemed strangely out of place in a 1989 stadium show, but the lazy slur of Jagger’s vocal, Leavell’s apt, soulful piano and Wood’s screaming slide guitar made for a riveting performance.

A nd then there were the hits. “Ruby Tuesday,” one of Jagger’s less convincing moments in concert, and a soaring, gorgeously lyrical “You Can’t Always Get What You Want” both inspired stadium-wide sing-alongs. An improvisatory falsetto burst from Jagger while he vamped with the two female background singers ignited “Miss You,” and Charlie Watts propelled “Paint It Black” with relentlessly churning rhythms. “Honky Tonk Women” — during which two enormous blowup dolls of bar floozies provided the show’s hokiest, most distracting element — and “Tumbling Dice” both were delivered with a raucous, appealing looseness.

As usual, the Stones saved the best for last. Jagger emerged at the top of the scaffolding, shrouded in smoke, as the Stones tore into the percussive introduction to “Sympathy for the Devil.” Lit from behind and standing more than a hundred feet above the stage, Jagger cast a dark shadow across the entire stadium, providing a gripping visual corollary to the song’s exploration of how evil infects the world. Once back on the stage, Jagger danced into a Bacchic frenzy, and Richards unleashed a mean, winding, angular lead that constituted his strongest playing of the night.

In what seemed to be an edgy reference to the Stones’ tragic 1969 show at Altamont Speedway, in California, at which a young black man was killed, a taut, sinewy version of “Gimme Shelter” — on which background singer Lisa Fischer turned in a torrid duet with Jagger — followed “Sympathy for the Devil.” After that, the mood lightened as the band leaned into “It’s Only Rock’n Roll” while on the video screens appeared footage of the pantheon of rock greats, including Little Richard , Chuck Berry , Jerry Lee Lewis , Elvis Presley , Jimi Hendrix and, in a funny aside, the young Rolling Stones.

Richards then lit the fuse on the opening chords of “Brown Sugar,” during which Jagger climbed down into the photographers’ pit and slapped fives with ecstatic fans and Bobby Keys blew his patented sax solo. As soon as “Brown Sugar” wrapped, Jagger, who seemed to be adrenaline incarnate at this point, said, “Okay, here we go,” and Richards launched the band into “(I Can’t Get No) Satisfaction.” Jagger spiced up “Satisfaction,” the last song of the set proper, with a host of R&B flourishes, largely borrowed from Otis Redding ‘s cover of the song. A one-song encore — a fierce, no-frills reading of “Jumpin’ Jack Flash” — ended the show.

The concluding segment of the show — running from “Sympathy for the Devil” to “Jumpin’ Jack Flash” — was particularly notable because it did not pitch into accelerated, deafening chaos, as Stones shows sometimes have done in the past. For the most part, the Stones worked closely from the recorded arrangements of the songs and recognized that a touch of restraint would only heighten the impact of their fervor. The result was a hard-hitting close that capped, but never overwhelmed, all that had preceded it. Then, after the Stones and their fellow musicians took their bows and left the stage, a fireworks display lit the sky as “Toreador Song,” from Bizet’s Carmen, played over the sound system.

From Philadelphia — where Richards’ former girlfriend Anita Pallenberg made a stylish appearance at the second night’s show — it was on to Toronto for two dates. In 1977, Mick Jagger and Ron Wood’s high jinks with Margaret Trudeau, then the wife of Pierre Trudeau, who was the Canadian prime minister at the time, and Keith Richards ‘ arrest for heroin possession electrified Toronto and made headlines around the world.

This time the Stones lay relatively low, though Jagger slyly alluded to the previous decade’s scandal when he quipped onstage the first night, “I was a little bit worried when I saw Mrs. Mulroney [the wife of Canadian prime minister Brian Mulroney] backstage, but everything’s cool.” Meanwhile, Toronto Star columnist Rita Zekas reported that a woman who identified herself as Margaret Trudeau drove up to the El Mocambo club, the scene of the Stones’ 1977 revels, and left in a huff when told that the Stones were not on the premises.

In Toronto — where the Stones have added two more shows, on December 3rd and 4th (they’ve also added two Detroit shows on December 9th and 10th) — Jagger turned up at a party at the Squeeze Club, tossed by one of the club’s owners, Marcus O’Hara, the brother of comic actress Catherine O’Hara. Producer Lorne Michaels, who is filming a documentary of the Stones’ tour, and singer-songwriter Mary Margaret O’Hara — another O’Hara sibling — also were on hand. Dan Aykroyd and his wife, Donna Dixon, who attended both Stones shows at the 60,000-seat Exhibition Stadium, had dropped by the Squeeze Club the previous night, along with Richards and Watts. A few days later, on the night before the September 6th show at the 62,000-seat Three Rivers Stadium, in Pittsburgh, Mick Jagger and Jerry Hall slipped out to a movie theater in Squirrel Hill, a suburb of the city, to catch sex, lies, and videotape.

As for the Stones’ own impressions of the tour, Richards could not be happier with how the shows have been proceeding. “They’re going well, man, so far,” he said, before going onstage at Alpine Valley, in East Troy, Wisconsin, on September 11th. “We’re keeping our fingers crossed, and I’ll hit the wood here, but, yeah, they’re getting better every day. The band’s really winding up now.” Given the success of the tour and the initial response to Steel Wheels, Richards said, “this has been a dream year for the Stones as a band.”

A nd according to Richards, the dream year might extend into 1990 — and take the Stones around the world — even though the last date currently announced for the Steel Wheels tour is December 14th in Montreal. “There’s this inevitable thing when you wind something like this up — you’ve got the whole organization ready to go — it’s kind of dumb not to take it into next year and see where you can get in around the rest of the world,” Richards said. “The whispers are getting audible now. That’s really all I can say about it right now, but it looks like the boys are going to continue for a bit.”

Even with the prospect of a world tour in the offing, perhaps the most impressive aspect of the Stones’ early shows is the degree to which — despite the money and the spectacle, the commerciality and the media assault — they are still playing like a band. The core of the group — Richards, Wood, Wyman and Watts — are as gritty and rhythmically raw as ever, and Jagger is the very definition of a frontman. More than a quarter of a century down the line, the Stones are not anachronisms. They are still able, at will, to tap the unruly, anarchic essence of what their music has always been about.

The greatest rock & roll band in the world? Even the Rolling Stones themselves are sheepish about making that claim at this point. But with the power they’re displaying this soon on the tour, you won’t get me to say they’re not.

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Additional reporting by Mitch Potter and Karen Morrison, in Toronto, and John Young, in Pittsburgh.

This is a story from the October 19, 1989 issue of Rolling Stone.

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The Rolling Stones launched legendary 'Steel Wheels' tour 30 years ago

Thirty years ago today,  The Rolling Stones  kicked off the massive  Steel Wheels Tour  at Veterans Stadium in Philadelphia in support of the album of the same name. Opening acts included  Living Colour  and  Guns n' Roses .

Mick Jagger talked about the  Steel Wheels  tour: "The first big outdoor stage was the Steel Wheels one, which was like so big it took us like five days to put it up. So it was a bit unwieldy."

The Stones' biggest and longest tour up to that point was the band's first since 1982. Like many opening nights, show one didn't go off without a hitch -- the power went out briefly during the third song, "Shattered."

More than 6.2 million fans saw them on that tour, which set a financial record -- $175 million gross over 115 shows. It was the last tour for the band's bassist,  Bill Wyman , who left the band after it was finished.

Performances from the tour were documented on the album  Flashpoint  and the video  Live at the Max , both released in 1991.

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How the Rolling Stones Finally Regrouped for ‘Steel Wheels’

By the '80s, Rolling Stones fans had grown accustomed to the turbulence surrounding the band as a way of life. But the fallout from the group's 1986 album, Dirty Work , was so toxic that for a brief period, it seemed like they might never find their way back.

Between 1986 and 1988, the Stones were effectively on hiatus while the band's creative nucleus – Mick Jagger and Keith Richards – released solo records and traded barbs in the press. But while it took some mediating, their differences were ultimately overcome by the power of their long partnership. On Aug. 29, 1989, the proof arrived in the form of their 21st U.S. LP, Steel Wheels .

"We've been stuffed together for years and one of the consequences of the break was making us realize we were stuck together whether we liked it or not," Richards laughed later. "I like him playing harp, man. And I like to see his bum in front of me when I'm playing guitar, doing his shit. I like about him all the things he probably hates about himself." Jagger agreed , "Because we've been doing it for so long, we don't really have to discuss it. When we come up with a lick or a riff or a chorus, we already know if it's right or if it's wrong."

Jagger and Richards tested the waters in Barbados, meeting up to try and write in early 1988. As they quickly discovered, the time off hadn't watered down their creative chemistry. In short order, they'd churned out dozens of new songs.

"We just started in. And within two days, we realized we had five or six songs happening," Richards later recalled . "I did have to take Mick to a few discos – which are not my favorite places in the world – because Mick likes to go out and dance at night. So I did that. That was my sacrifice. I humored him. And that's when I knew we could work together."

Even after Steel Wheels was finished, Jagger continued to maintain that the various members' solo careers were essential to the Rolling Stones' survival, but by all appearances, he needed that outlet more than anyone.

Watch the Rolling Stones Perform 'Rock and a Hard Place'

"If Keith had sold like Michael Jackson figures, he would have still been back in the Stones. He would have dropped everything to come back," insisted guitarist Ron Wood , whose efforts as a go-between for the squabbling songwriters were credited with helping heal the breach. "What surprised me was that Mick didn't do those figures. That probably surprised him, too, and maybe it did make him realize the strength of the band. But once he and Keith spent some time together in Barbados, they just realized the friendship was longer and stronger than any paper or any magazine."

After dabbling with producer Steve Lillywhite for the occasionally glossy Dirty Work , the band reunited with longtime associate Chris Kimsey to co-produce Steel Wheels . Having served as an engineer on Sticky Fingers and Some Girls , Kimsey was well-acquainted with the group's strengths, and helped steer them into what amounted to a roots-oriented record – cleanly recorded and boasting some modern touches, but distinctly the work of a band .

"What most people are concerned with nowadays is not rhythm itself but the sound of the thing that's creating the beat. They got these new toys, things that'll go  crash and woo-wooo-woooo , and what is actually lacking is rhythm," Richards complained  after Steel Wheels was released, explaining his approach to making music in the late '80s. "All this shit don't seduce me. It's like a department store at the moment and nobody can get out of the toy department."

Though quite a bit of Steel Wheels found the band plying its trade in relatively back-to-basics fashion, the album wasn't without its share of adventure, particularly on the song "Continental Drift," which featured the Moroccan ensemble the Master Musicians of Joujouka – a deliberate nod to deceased Stones co-founder Brian Jones , who'd recorded the Master Musicians in 1968 for the album Brian Jones Presents the Pipes of Pan at Joujouka .

"We became a hard-rock band, and we became very content with it. The ballads got left a little behind as well. The hard-rock thing just took over, and we lost a little bit of sensitivity and adventure," argued Jagger. "It's boring just doing hard rock all the time. You gotta bounce it around a little."

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For the record's first single, however, they played things safe: "Mixed Emotions" was a pure Stones rave-up that surged on the strength of the group's classic sound and a soaring chorus whose refrain ("You're not the only one with mixed emotions / You're not the only ship adrift on the ocean") seemed to speak to the dark spell its co-writers' relationship had recently weathered.

It was hard not to hear "Mixed Emotions" as a comment on Jagger and Richards' public feuding ("I realized what we'd laid down there had all the ingredients of an interesting autobiography," Richards told Rolling Stone ), and in fact, even as the Glimmer Twins renewed their partnership, they remained somewhat testy about the way things fell apart after Dirty Work – particularly Jagger's refusal to tour in support of that record.

"The album wasn't that good," Jagger said in a 1989 interview with Rolling Stone . "It was okay . It certainly wasn't a great Rolling Stones album. The feeling inside the band was very bad too. The relationships were terrible. The health was diabolical. I wasn't in particularly good shape. The rest of the band, they couldn't walk across the Champs Elysées, much less go on the road. So we had this long bad experience of making that record, and the last thing I wanted to do was spend another year with the same people. I just wanted to be out."

Richard shrugged, "I was really pissed that he wasn't really into the album. I wanted to go on the road after we finished it. And I didn't get a clear answer until the record was finished. Which was basically 'Screw off.'"

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Steel Wheels was a Top 5 hit on both sides of the Atlantic, setting up a major worldwide tour brokered behind a record-setting deal that padded that band's bottom line significantly. Even in an era of corporate sponsorship, the Stones came under fire for cashing in so successfully, but Jagger was unequivocal in batting back accusations that they'd sold out.

"Of course, we're doing it for the money, as well ," he pointed out . "We've always done it for the money. People get highly paid in rock and roll. That's why it's so attractive. It's like boxing. People don't do boxing for nothing. They start off doing it because they hope to get to the top, because when they get to the top, they'll make lots of money. I mean, that's America."

As would increasingly be the case with Stones records, Steel Wheels was compared favorably to their recent efforts, leading to critics' cries of "their best since (insert classic Stones LP here)" along with questions about just how long the band could keep going. Jagger, as ever, remained noncommittal. "Keith should be encouraged to do whatever he wants to do," he told Rolling Stone . "And I should be encouraged to do what I'd rather do. What it is, I don't know. But I should be encouraged to push it further. I don't want to stay only with this ."

Richards, meanwhile, was perfectly content to just keep rocking. "The funny thing about those riffs, those songs, is that if I'm playing them, it's because I still get the same kick out of it, y'know?" he said with a laugh in a 1990 interview with Time Out . "There're riffs like 'Tumbling Dice' where you go [he kisses both hands and blows on them] 'Jesus Christ, it's a sweet riff. This is the feeling I been looking for forever. Jesus Christ! Is this ME!? HEY, THAT'S ME, BABY, AND I SOUND LIKE THIS!'"

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  • Teaser Tag: Music & Money

“Stones Gather Dollars” 1989-2008

October 1989 edition of Forbes business magazine featuring Mick Jagger & Keith Richards among the world's 'highest paid entertainers'.

In the feature story, Forbes writer Peter Newcomb provided a detailed look at what the Stones were then up to, and by way of their experience, a revealing look at the rock ‘n roll business on its way to the 1990s.

The Stones, even then, were a “senior” rock ‘n roll group, having risen to fame, along with the Beatles, a good 25 years earlier in the 1960s. Yet at this point in their lives and careers, they still had another 20 years of performing ahead. But in the late 1980s when Forbes caught up with them, they were at the beginning of a series of live concerts called the “Steel Wheels Tour,” a tour launched to coincide with a new album, also titled Steel Wheels . This tour, however, also presaged a new era in the business of rock ‘n roll, and specifically the big business of concert touring.

     In 1988, a Canadian promoter named Michael Cohl had guaranteed the Stones a take of $70 million for the tour.  The math went something like this: the tour would draw 3 million people in just under 60 locations.  At about $30 a ticket, a $90 million gate would be generated, with 40 percent paid to the stadium owners and local promoters, leaving 60 percent — or more than $50 million — to the Stones and the tour promoter.  Tour-related merchandise, including T-shirts, jackets, and other paraphernalia, would boost the take to the guaranteed $70 million.  In fact this tour, and its related business, would generate considerably more than $70 million.

Macy’s, Bud & Beyond

     The Stones had also made arrangements to sell tour-related material not only at the concert sites, but also at department stores such as Macy’s, J. C. Penney, and Marshall Field.  In some of these stores, “Rolling Stones boutiques” offered a full line of products stamped with the Steel Wheels logo: $5 bandanas, sweatshirts, skateboards, $450 bomber jackets, and two lines of Converse high-top sneakers.  There were also pay-per-view TV rights in the offing at $6-to-$7 million, not including foreign TV rights.  A tour-related movie and a two-hour TV special were being planned as well.  “We never dreamed there was any money when we started this thing. It was idealism. It was not knowing what else to do with your life. But then, suddenly, the impossible happened.”               – Keith Richards, 1989  And finally, Anheuser-Busch paid close to $6 million for rights to make its Budweiser beer the tour sponsor.  All of this meant that the Stones would gross about $90 million for the year.

Budweiser was a Steel Wheels sponsor.

Business Savvy

     At the time of the Steel Wheels Tour in 1989, the Rolling Stones were already pretty savvy business people.  Since 1971, they had secured the services of a former London merchant banker named Rupert Zu Loewenstein, who carries an old Bavarian title of “Prince” and became their financial advisor.  The Stones by then were also pretty capable when negotiating recording deals.  In 1985 they signed a distribution agreement with CBS Records that reportedly gave the band $25 million for four albums and the rights to all the old Rolling Stones catalog from Atlantic.  Walter Yetnikoff, the CBS record chief who negotiated with Jagger, said that “Mick was very astute,” lauding him as a guy who could think on his feet, capable of figuring royalty and tax rates in his head.  Jagger had studied macroeconomics at the London School of Economics, which he would later say was mostly economic history.

     But the Stones weren’t always on top of their game economically.  In fact, in the early years, they lost a good deal of money making bad deals.  During the mid-1960s, when the Stones first broke out, they had sold some ten million singles, including their monster 1965-66 hit “Satisfaction.”  They also sold some five million albums in the early years.  Still, they were not making money. “When we first started out, there wasn’t really any money in rock ‘n roll. There wasn’t a touring industry; it didn’t even exist….”                           – Mick Jagger   “When we first started out, there wasn’t really any money in rock ‘n roll,” Jagger explained to Fortune magazine in 2002.  “There wasn’t a touring industry; it didn’t even exist.  Obviously there was somebody maybe who made money, but it certainly wasn’t the act. …[E]ven if you were very successful, you got paid nothing.”  The Stones also suffered from lack of negotiating experience.  “I’ll never forget the deals I did in the ’60s, which were just terrible,” Jagger would later say .   In 1965, Allen Klein, a New York manager, helped the Stone’s negotiate a new contract with Decca records and also helped the group win their first million-dollar payday.  But Allen Klein also helped himself.  His company, ABKCO, still retains the rights to the Stones’ early songs from the 1960s through 1971 — a sore point with the Stones, who parted ways with Klein in the early 1970s.  Since then, the Stones have been very much a business-minded rock ‘n roll group, attentive to everything from royalty rates to tax policy.  But by the time of their 1989 Steel Wheels tour, their business savvy had reached a new level and demand for their music was as strong as ever.

Steel Wheels Success

Just as the Rolling Stones were beginning their North America 'Steel Wheels' tour in 1989, they appeared on the cover of Time magazine, September 4th, 1989. Click for copy.

Tour Model Honed

     Yet 1989’s Steel Wheels was just the beginning for the Rolling Stones.  More gate-busting tours would follow over the next two decades.  But Steel Wheels became the model.  Its promoter, Canadian Michael Cohl, was hired permanently by the Stones to become their full-time tour manager.  With each subsequent tour, the 1989 experience was honed, costs were pared, and even bigger paydays resulted. 

     The Stones’ Voodoo Lounge tour of 1994-95 grossed nearly $370 million worldwide.  In 1997-1999, the Bridges to Babylon/No Security Tour grossed more than $390 million, attracting some 5.6 million people worldwide.  By 2002, Fortune magazine estimated that between 1989 and 2002, the Stones pulled in about $1.5 billion, including tours and other business, an amount that exceeded what other rock ‘n roll competitors did in that same period, whether U-2, Michael Jackson, Britney Spears, or Bruce Springsteen.  Nor did the Rolling Stones’ touring end in 2002.  Their Forty Licks world tour of 2002-2003 played to an audience of 1 million, generating $200 million over 32 show dates in the U.S., Canada, Europe, and the Far East.  In 2005, they released a studio album, A Bigger Bang , followed by another tour — this one the highest-grossing tour in history, pulling in $558 million between the fall 2005 and late August 2007, according to Billboard .

     The Stone’s success with touring and their tour-related businesses no doubt had an impact on other “retired” rockers who in recent years decided to get back in the game and on the road again.  But other economic factors were also at work by the late 1990s.  The traditional music sales model was changing dramatically with the internet and MP3 players, as album and CD sales began to plummet.  The live-performance business became a much more important source of income for artists, old and new.  Still, the Stones appear to have made a special category all their own.

     Fortune magazine’s Andy Serwer, writing in September 2002 on why the Stone’s continued their appeal way beyond their prime hit-producing years, explained:

“…Subjectively, the Rolling Stones sound pretty damn good, even after all these years.  And objectively, if they’re such has-beens, then how do you explain the band’s phenomenal commercial success over the past decade? No, they aren’t writing groundbreaking songs anymore — in fact they haven’t really recorded any new material of note in 20 years — but we sure are listening to their old stuff.  A lot.  And buying concert tickets.  Millions and millions of them.  And that’s the wrinkle here. Even though the Stones have been in what you might call a creatively fallow period, we want to hear them more than ever.  Couple that with the fact that they have perfected their business model, and it’s easy to understand why they are such an astounding money-making machine.”

Although not turning out hits at the rate they did in the 1960s & ‘70s, the Rolling Stones in the 1990s & 2000s used concert filming & DVDs to package their music in a new way as in 1995's Voodoo Lounge DVD.

Songwriting, Ads & Film

     Beyond touring and DVDs, there have also been other business deals and income streams to help fill the Stones’ coffers.  Songwriting royalties continue to flow to Jagger and Richards for the 200 or so songs they have jointly written.  “Music publishing is more profitable to the artist than recording,” Jagger explained to Fortune magazine in 2002.  “It’s just tradition.  There’s no rhyme or reason.  The people who wrote songs were probably better businesspeople than the people who sang them were.  You go back to George Gershwin and his contemporaries — they probably negotiated better deals, and they became the norm of the business.  So if you wrote a song, you got half of it, and the other half went to your publisher.  That’s the model for writing.”  So anytime one of the Jagger/Richards songs is played on the radio or any other public venue, they get a piece of the action.

In 1995, Bill Gates made a multi-million-dollar deal to use the Rolling Stones’ 1981 song ‘Start Me Up’ as the theme song in an advertising campaign to launch & sell Microsoft’s new computer software.

     Ray Gmeiner, a vice president at Virgin Records has stated that “The Rolling Stones are a unique brand because they’ve taken the business side of rock and roll to the level that few if any other bands have.”  Add Roger Blackwell and Tina Stephan in their 2004 book, Brands That Rock :  “The Rolling Stones organization is a well-oiled, money making machine, and to say it resembles anything less than a Fortune 500 firm would be unjust…”

Still Rocking

The Rolling Stones, 2005.

     Their business empire aside, however, at the center of the Rolling Stones is their music.  Millions of fans young and old still enjoy that music, and will no doubt continue to enjoy it for many years into the future.  And for the Stones too, the music is key.  They don’t really need to be touring; they make money standing still.  In a 1995 interview with Jan Wenner of Rolling Stone magazine, Jagger told Wenner that love of the blues, love of rock music, and love of performing that music was at the center of what he did.  And Keith Richards has said much the same.  “This whole thing runs on passion,” Richards told Fortune in 2002.  “Even though we don’t talk about it much ourselves, it’s almost a sort of quest or mission.”  New York Times reporter Stephen Holden recently wrote in an April 2008 review of Martin Scorcese’s documentary featuring Stone’s concerts, “…[T]he Rolling Stones appear supremely alive inside their giant, self-created rock ‘n roll machine. The sheer pleasure of making music that keens and growls like a pack of ravenous alley cats is obviously what keeps them going.  Why should they ever stop?”

Other stories on the Rolling Stones at this website include: “Paint It Black” (song history & subsequent uses); “Start Me Up” (use of song by Microsoft as Windows 95 theme song), “…No Satisfaction” (1966 song that marked a kind of cultural divide at the time); and, “Shine A Light” (Martin Scorsese / Rolling Stones film trailer). Additional stories on music history, song profiles, and artist biography can be found at the “Annals of Music” category page. Thanks for visiting – and if you like what you find here, please make a donation to help support the research and writing at this website . Thank you. – Jack Doyle

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Date Posted:   3 December 2008 Last Update:   9 July 2017 Comments to: [email protected]

Article Citation: Jack Doyle, “Stones Gather Dollars, 1989-2008,” PopHistoryDig.com , December 3, 2008.

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Rolling Stones at Amazon.com …

Sources, Links & Additional Information

Poster for 2008 Martin Scorsese film of Rolling Stones’ concerts.

Peter Newcomb, “Satisfaction Guaranteed,” Forbes , October 2, 1989.

Constance L. Hays, “2 Generations of Fans Enjoy Rolling Stones’ Live Legacy,” New York Times , October 11, 1989.

Tom Harrison – Music Critic, “Keith Richards Sets The Tone,” The Vancouver Province , November 1, 1989.

Michiko Kakutani, Pop View, “Troubadours Of Fickle Time And Its Passing,” New York Times , September 4, 1994.

Richard Harrington, “That Old Jagger Edge; At RFK, the Stones Rock and Roll On,” Washington Post , August 2, 1994, p. F-1.

“Microsoft Throws Stones Into Its Windows 95 Ads,” New York Times , August 18, 1995.

David Segal, “With Windows 95’s Debut, Microsoft Scales Heights of Hype,” Washington Post , Thursday, August 24, 1995, p. A-14.

Jann Wenner, “ Jagger Remembers: The Rolling Stone Interview ,” Rolling Stone , December 14, 1995.

Michiko Kakutani, “Heart of Stones,” New York Times Magazine , October 12, 1997.

Richard Harrington, “Smooth Stones Roll Out The Oldies,” Washington Post , October 24, 1997, p. D-1.

Kelefa Sanneh, “Rolling Stones Revel in the Act of Survival,” New York Times , September 27, 2002.

Andy Serwer and associates Julia Boorstin and Ann Harrington, “Inside the Rolling Stones Inc.,” Fortune , September 30, 2002.

“A Conversation With Mick Jagger,” The Charlie Rose Show , Thursday, November 14, 2002

Roger Blackwell and Tina Stephan, Brands That Rock, Hoboken, NJ: John Wiley & Sons, 2004.

Jon Pareles, “Swaggering Past 60, Unrepentant,” New York Times , August 23, 2005.

J. Freedom du Lac, “Time on Their Side; The Rolling Stones, Still Rocking Like It’s 1995, or 1965,” Washington Post , October 4, 2005, p. C-1.

The Rolling Stones, No. 4, “The Forbes Celebrity 100,” Forbes , June 14, 2007.

Stephen Holden, “Only Rock ‘N’ Roll, but They’re Still at It,” New York Times, April 4, 2008.

“ The Rolling Stones ” and “ Shine a Light ,” Wikipedia.org , 2008.

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Seaside streets & Copacabana Beach in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, 'filling up' with hundreds of thousands of onlookers & fans during the evening prior to Rolling Stones’ concert, February 2006.

The Pop History Dig is a website offering historical and topical stories on business, politics, and popular culture.

Steel Wheels/Urban Jungle Tour

The Rolling Stones ' Steel Wheels Tour was a concert tour which was launched in North America in August 1989 to promote the band's album Steel Wheels ; it continued to Japan in February 1990, with ten shows at the Tokyo Dome . The European leg of the tour, which featured a different stage and logo, was called the Urban Jungle Tour ; it ran from May to August 1990. These would be the last live concerts for the band with original member Bill Wyman on bass guitar. This tour would also be the longest the band had ever done up to that point, playing over twice as many shows as their standard tour length from the 1960s and 1970s.

The tour was an enormous financial success, cementing the Rolling Stones' return to full commercial power after a seven-year hiatus in touring marked by well publicized acrimony among band members.

The Rolling Stones began pre-tour preparations in July 1989 at the Wykeham Rise School, a former boarding school for girls in Litchfield, Connecticut. A 25-member entourage, as well as a security force larger than the surrounding towns, was hired to support the band.

The group performed a pre-tour 'surprise show' that took place on 12 August 1989 at Toad's Place in New Haven, Connecticut , with a local act, Sons of Bob, opening the show for an audience of only 700 people who had purchased tickets for $3.01 apiece. The official Steel Wheels Tour kicked off later that month at the now-demolished Veterans Stadium in Philadelphia . During the opening show in Philadelphia, the power went out during "Shattered", and caused a slight delay in the show. Jagger came out and spoke to the crowd during the delay. The Stones returned to Vancouver, B.C. in Canada and played two sold-out concerts at B.C. Place Stadium . Fan reaction for tickets was unprecedented. One local radio station, 99.3 The Fox , even had a man (Andrew Korn) sit in front of the station in a bath tub filled with brown sugar and water for free tickets to the concert. [ citation needed ]

The stage was designed by Mark Fisher with the participation of Charlie Watts and Mick Jagger . Lighting design was by Patrick Woodroffe .

Canadian promoter Michael Cohl made his name buying the concert, sponsorship, merchandising, radio, television, and film rights to the Steel Wheels Tour. It became the most financially successful rock tour in history up to that time. Rival promoter Bill Graham , who also bid on the tour, later wrote that "Losing the Stones was like watching my favourite lover become a whore."

Performances from the tour were documented on the album Flashpoint , and the video Live at the Max , both released in 1991.

Opening acts for the tour included Living Colour , Dan Reed Network , Guns N' Roses and Gun .

The original two dates 13 & 14 July 1990 at Wembley Stadium had to be rescheduled for 24 & 25 August 1990 due to Keith Richards cutting a finger the previous week.

In August 1990, an extra concert in Prague , Czechoslovakia , was added. Czechoslovakia had overthrown the Communist regime nine months earlier, and the Rolling Stones' concert was perceived as a symbolic end of the revolution. Czechoslovakia's new president Václav Havel , a lifelong fan of the band, helped to arrange the event, and met the band at the Prague Castle before the show. Performance expenses were partially covered by Havel and by the Czechoslovak Ministry of Industry. The attendance was over 100,000. The band chose to donate all revenues from the gig (over 4 million Czechoslovak korunas ) to the Committee of Good Will, a charity run by Havel's wife Olga Havlová .

Released in 1991, Flashpoint , is a 17-song live album of material recorded during the Steel Wheels/Urban Jungle Tour.

In July 2020, Eagle Rock Entertainment released a recording and DVD set of the final date of the North American tour titled Steel Wheels Live . The performance, recorded at the Atlantic City Convention Center, features guest appearances by John Lee Hooker , Eric Clapton , Axl Rose and Izzy Stradlin .

The Rolling Stones

  • Mick Jagger – lead vocals, guitar, harmonica, percussion
  • Keith Richards – rhythm guitars, lead guitars, vocals
  • Ronnie Wood – lead guitars
  • Bill Wyman – bass guitar
  • Charlie Watts – drums

Additional musicians

  • Matt Clifford – keyboards, backing vocals, percussion, French horn
  • Bobby Keys – saxophone
  • Chuck Leavell – keyboards, backing vocals and musical director
  • Bernard Fowler – backing vocals, percussion
  • Lisa Fischer – backing vocals on the North American & Japanese tours only
  • Cindy Mizelle – backing vocals on the North American & Japanese tours only
  • Pamela Quinlan – backing vocals on North American & European tour only
  • Lorelei McBroom – backing vocals on the European tour only
  • Sophia Jones – backing vocals on the European tour only
  • The Uptown Horns:
  • Arno Hecht – saxophone
  • Bob Funk – trombone
  • Crispin Cioe – saxophone
  • Paul Litteral – trumpet
  • Michael Cohl – Tour Director
  • Norman Perry – Assistant Tour Director
  • Alan Dunn – Logistics
  • Arnold Dunn – Band Road Manager
  • Timm Wooley – Financial Controller
  • Bob Hurwitz – Tour Accountant
  • Stan Damas – Police Liaison
  • Jim Callaghan – Security Chief
  • Rowan Brade – Security
  • Bob Bender – Security
  • Joe Seabrook – Security
  • William Horgan – Security
  • Linn Tanzmann – Band Press Representative
  • Neil Friedman – Assistant Tour Publicist
  • Bennett Kleinberg – Advance Tour Publicist
  • Dimo Safari – Tour Photographer
  • Beth Kittrell – Administrative Assistant
  • Caroline Clements – Makeup
  • Robern Pickering – Wardrobe
  • Fiona Williams – Stylist
  • LaVelle Smith – Choreographer
  • Torje Eike – Physiotherapist
  • Joseph Sakowicz – Band/Entourage Luggage
  • Shelley Lazar – Ticket/Credentials Coordinator
  • Miranda Guinness – Asst. to Mick Jagger
  • Tony Russell – Asst. to Keith Richards
  • Jo Howard – Asst. to Ron Wood
  • Tony King – Mick Jagger Press Liaison
  • Patricia Aleck – Travel Advance
  • Cliff Burnstein – Creative Consultant
  • Peter Mensch – Creative Consultant
  • Michael Ahern – Production Manager
  • Chuch Magee – Backline Crew Chief
  • Roy Lamb – Stage Manager
  • Mark Fisher – Set Designer
  • Patrick Woodroffe – Lighting Designer
  • Benji Lefevre – FOH Sound Engineer
  • Chris Wade-Evans – Monitor Sound Engineer
  • Pierre De Beauport – Guitar Technician
  • Andy Topeka – Keyboard Technician
  • Steve Thomas – Production Advance
  • Steve Howard – Promoter Production Rep
  • Bruce Haynes – Electrician
  • Shane Hendrick – Electrician
  • David Sinclair – Electrician
  • Henry Wetzel – Electrician

Tour set lists

For the opening night of the Steel Wheels Tour the setlist was as follows (all songs composed by Jagger/Richards unless otherwise noted):

  • " Start Me Up "
  • " Shattered "
  • "Sad Sad Sad"
  • " Undercover of the Night "
  • " Harlem Shuffle " ( Relf/Nelson )
  • " Tumbling Dice "
  • " Miss You "
  • " Ruby Tuesday "
  • " Play with Fire " ( Nanker Phelge )
  • " Dead Flowers "
  • " One Hit (To the Body) " (Jagger/Richards/Wood)
  • " Mixed Emotions "
  • " Honky Tonk Women "
  • " Rock and a Hard Place "
  • " Midnight Rambler "
  • " You Can't Always Get What You Want "
  • " Little Red Rooster " ( Dixon )
  • " Before They Make Me Run "
  • " Paint It Black "
  • " 2000 Light Years from Home "
  • " Sympathy for the Devil "
  • " Gimme Shelter "
  • " It's Only Rock 'n Roll (But I Like It) "
  • " Brown Sugar "
  • " (I Can't Get No) Satisfaction "
  • " Jumpin' Jack Flash " (encore)

For the final night of the Urban Jungle Tour (the last Rolling Stones concert with Bill Wyman ) the band played:

  • "Start Me Up"
  • "Harlem Shuffle"
  • "Tumbling Dice"
  • "Ruby Tuesday"
  • "Rock and a Hard Place"
  • "Mixed Emotions"
  • "Honky Tonk Women"
  • "Midnight Rambler"
  • "You Can't Always Get What You Want"
  • "Before They Make Me Run"
  • "Paint It Black"
  • "2000 Light Years from Home"
  • "Sympathy for the Devil"
  • " Street Fighting Man "
  • "Gimme Shelter"
  • "It's Only Rock 'n Roll (But I Like It)"
  • "Brown Sugar"
  • "Jumpin' Jack Flash"
  • "(I Can't Get No) Satisfaction" (encore)

Other songs played on the tour:

  • " Almost Hear You Sigh " (Jagger/Richards/Jordan)
  • "Blinded By Love"
  • " Boogie Chillen " ( Hooker )
  • "Can't Be Seen"
  • " Factory Girl "
  • " I Just Want to Make Love to You " (Dixon)
  • " Salt of the Earth "
  • " Terrifying "
  • List of highest grossing concert tours
  • List of most-attended concert tours
  • 1989 concert tours
  • 1990 concert tours
  • The Rolling Stones concert tours
  • 1989 in American music
  • 1989 in Canadian music
  • 1990 in Japanese music
  • 1990 in Europe

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mick jagger steel wheels tour

Tart me up! The Rolling Stones’ fantastical stage designs – in pictures

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As the Stones tour again, the head of their longtime stage design firm Stufish describes his company’s creations, from 1989’s Steel Wheels gigs to the present day

Mon 25 Apr 2022 09.49 BST

Steel Wheels tour, 1989

Photograph: Stufish

Steel Wheels tour, 1989

Photograph: Paul Natkin/Getty Images

Keith Richards on stage during the Steel Wheels tour, late 1989.

Voodoo Lounge tour, 1994

Voodoo Lounge tour, 1994.

Photograph: Paul Natkin/WireImage

Mick Jagger on the Voodoo Lounge Tour in 1994 in New York.

Bridges to Babylon tour, 1997

Bridges to Babylon tour, 1997

Licks tour, 2002

Licks tour, 2002

Photograph: Marcel Mettelsiefen/EPA

Keith Richards, June 2003 at Berlin’s Olympic stadium

A Bigger Bang tour, 2005

A Bigger Bang tour, 2005

50 & Counting tour, 2012

50 & Counting tour, 2012

Photograph: Jim Dyson/Redferns/Getty Images

Mick Jagger at the 02 Arena, November 2012.

14 On Fire tour, 2014

14 On Fire tour, 2014

No Filter tour, 2017

Photograph: Manfred H Vogel

No Filter tour, 2017

Photograph: Keuenhof Rainer/action press/Rex/Shutterstock

The Rolling Stones at the Esprit Arena, Dusseldorf, Germany, October 2017

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Some of the fashions worn by the Rolling Stones on display at “Exhibitionism” at Navy Pier. | MIRIAM DI NUNZIO PHOTO

Dressing the Stones: Designers talk about ‘Exhibitionism’ fashions

Alexander McQueen. Prada. Saint Laurent. Jean Paul Gaultier. Ossie Clark. Tommy Nutter.

You have just stepped into the closets of Mick Jagger, Keith Richards, Charlie Watts and Bill Wyman.

And if you visit “Exhibitionism,” the 18,000-square-foot Rolling Stones extravaganza on display through July 30 at Navy Pier, you can get an up-close look at the fashions created by the aforementioned designers (and a few more) for the iconic rockers and their legendary world tours.

But a glance at the clothes reveal them not merely as stage costumes, but in large measure as one-of-a-kind works of art — reflective of pop culture and the fashion sense of the men who wore them, most notably Jagger, who became deeply entrenched in every facet of every tour, from the set design to the lighting to every stitch of clothing in which he pranced and paraded.

“I think what really stood out to their audiences was the fact that the guys weren’t wearing costumes. Those were their real clothes,” said acclaimed American fashion designer Anna Sui, who consulted on the fashion gallery for “Exhibitionism,” and whose first couture line of men’s fashions ended up on Jagger’s frame.

The Ossie Clark black and red ensemble foreground with Omega T-shirt and cape worn by Mick Jagger at Altamont and Madison Square Garden 1969. Charlie Watts crystal-embellished shirt (background) worn during the band’s 1972 U.S. tour. | MIRIAM DI NUNZIO PH

The Ossie Clark black and red ensemble foreground with Omega T-shirt and cape worn by Mick Jagger at Altamont and Madison Square Garden 1969. Charlie Watts crystal-embellished shirt (background) worn during the band’s 1972 U.S. tour. | MIRIAM DI NUNZIO PHOTO

“And they were wearing clothes that they borrowed from their girlfriends. They were the first [major rockers] to wear jewelry, ruffles, velvet. They were real dandies. And it kind of changed the way men were dressing. Men became the peacocks of the moment. Suddenly, these guys were wearing longer hair, boots with heels, tight velvet pants, skin-tight shirts and these brocade-type jackets. It just broke the style mode for men. It was part of their whole liberation as musicians and as men.”

The Stones may have begun their music journey wearing identical suits and haircuts (much like their British Invasion counterparts), but they quickly eschewed the look, and Sui said it forever changed how tours were designed.

The Stones’ clothing also reflected their music, whether it was a song title, or lyric or tone, completely derailing rock bands’ homogeneous sensibilities.

“I think some of the designers really did look at the general aura of an album and a tour,” Sui said, “what the band was trying to personify at the moment. They went through their bluesy period, their psychedelic period, so their style was also being influenced by this. Mick more than the rest was always going to major designers for his tour clothes. And that’s why everybody remembers what he wore. If you look at Altamont, for example, the Ossie Clark black and red [ensemble] when Mick is singing ‘Sympathy for the Devil,’ he certainly had a devilish look about him! Mick was being very provocative with everything he wore and I really think that was intentional. When he wore the Ossie Clark panne velvet jumpsuits (there are several featured at the Navy Pier exhibit) they’re really more of a woman’s costume. But it was all about being provocative.

“Keith Richards became the standard for the rock star look,” Sui added. “How many [rockers] did you soon see walking around with aviator shades and using those big prayer scarves such as his and the flair pants with the conchos down the side?”

Famed British designer Ossie Clark created the long-sleeved golden yellow jumpsuit for Mick Jagger in 1972, and the sleeveless blue velvet jumpsuit for the band’s 1972 U.S. tour. | MIRIAM DI NUNZIO PHOTO

Famed British designer Ossie Clark created the long-sleeved golden yellow jumpsuit for Mick Jagger in 1972, and the sleeveless blue velvet jumpsuit for the band’s 1972 U.S. tour. | MIRIAM DI NUNZIO PHOTO

Sui would ultimately see her designs on national television thanks to Jagger. “The first time I did a men’s clothing line on the runway, Mick became my first customer,” she said. “He was [appearing on] ‘Saturday Night Live’ [in 1993] and I got this call from his [assistant] that he wanted everything I had just debuted for men. And he wore [some of it] on the show. Either he saw it at the [runway] show or his stylist saw it. But he wanted it all.”

Tony Award-winning costume designer William Ivey Long (who was recently nominated for an Emmy Award for his work on “Grease: Live!” on Fox, and presented with the Art Institute’s “Legend of Fashion” award” in 2003) was enlisted to design Jagger’s stagewear for the 1989 Steel Wheels tour. Six of his pieces are featured in “Exhibitionism,” including a blue leather Eisenhower jacket with the Stones’ iconic lips logo on the back, and a green leather Regency jacket, reminiscent of the 18th century. The clothing was couture, pure and simple.

For the Stones’ Steel Wheels Tour in 1989, William Ivey Long created this blue Eisenhower jacket with a handpainted Rolling Stones logo for Mick Jagger, accompanied by black pants with Steel Wheels Tour logo trapuntoed down the side seams. | MIRIAM DI NUN

For the Stones’ Steel Wheels Tour in 1989, William Ivey Long created this blue Eisenhower jacket with a handpainted Rolling Stones logo for Mick Jagger, accompanied by black pants with Steel Wheels Tour logo trapuntoed down the side seams. | MIRIAM DI NUNZIO PHOTO

“For the blue leather jacket, I handpainted the lips [logo] on the back and then sandpapered it to make it look [distressed],” Long said. “For those tight black pants I basically took the Steel Wheels logo and made it out of silver fabric and trapuntoed it down the sides of each leg, greatly accenting the vertical.”

Long said he knew the ante had been upped for Steel Wheels because of the massive scale and effects tied to the stage design. He met with Jagger and they looked at sketches and bolts of fabrics, from velvets to leathers to brocades, and mockups of some of the shirts and jackets. He eventually made 56 different items for Jagger, and often met the band on various tour stops to add pieces or, in once instance, replace a handpainted Andy-Warhol-influenced shirt that was stolen by an intrepid fan. “It cost $1,800 back in 1989,” Long said, “so think of its value today. It was a one-of-a-kind, when you think about it.”

Long added that the lighting and stage design called for massive use of jewel tones in Jagger’s wear in order to make him stand out to the very last row of a 30,000-seat arena. “We spent hours picking out these gorgeous greens and even goldenrod yellows to stand out against Mark Fisher’s sets,” Long said. “I didn’t make anything black for Mick, except pants, because everything he wore had to really sing.”

And as for that eternal question, “Do the clothes make the man, or does the man make the clothes?” Long didn’t skip a beat.

“In the case of Mick Jagger, the man most definitely makes the clothes. He could wear a paper bag and make it look fabulous because it’s really about the charisma of the wearer.”

William Ivey Long’s sketch for Mick Jagger, Rolling Stones: Steel Wheels Tour.  The green leather jacket is inspired by the Great Britain’s Regency period (during the reign of King George III). The jacket features sleeves that tied onto the shoulder, with

William Ivey Long’s sketch for Mick Jagger, Rolling Stones: Steel Wheels Tour. The green leather jacket is inspired by the Great Britain’s Regency period (during the reign of King George III). The jacket features sleeves that tied onto the shoulder, with open underarms. The pants were tightly fitted in a stretch wool with a stirrup, and had the Steel Wheels logo on the trapuntoed stripe down the side. | COURTESY WILLIAM IVEY LONG STUDIO

William Ivey Long’s original sketch for Mick Jagger’s blue leather jacket featuring the handpainted Stones logo on the back, which was then “distressed” with sandpaper. | COURTESY WILLIAM IVEY LONG STUDIO

William Ivey Long’s original sketch for Mick Jagger’s blue leather jacket featuring the handpainted Stones logo on the back, which was then “distressed” with sandpaper. | COURTESY WILLIAM IVEY LONG STUDIO

NOTE: For a limited time, you can purchase a special ticket combo package, featuring a fast-pass ticket to Navy Pier’s Centennial Wheel along with a flexi ticket to “Exhibitionism” for $39, beginning July 5. Visit navypier.com or the Centennial Wheel ticket booth at the pier.

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August 2022, Berlin: Ron Wood , Mick Jagger and Keith Richards of the band Rolling Stones perform during the anniversary tour "Sixty" at the...

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Mick and Keith—And Chuck: The Rolling Stones’ Essential, Unsung Rock-and-Roll Hero

mick jagger steel wheels tour

By Joe Hagan

Chuck Leavell performs in Atlanta in 2012.

It’s a sunny Monday morning outside the MetLife Stadium, down in the swamps of Jersey, and two random Rolling Stones fans—bald, acid-washed jeans—are loitering outside the high fence when they recognize the man some people call the “fifth Rolling Stone,” Chuck Leavell.

“Have a good gig, Chuck!” one yells. “Have a good gig!”

The white-bearded and cherub-faced piano player is not an instantly recognizable celebrity, but if he’s going to be recognized, it’s at the gates of the Rolling Stones’ 11th show on their 15-city tour of America. The diehards know he’s played with the band for 37 years, joining between the Tattoo You and Undercover albums, and that he was once in the Allman Brothers Band and played the piano solo on the Southern-rock instrumental classic “Jessica.” Maybe they’re aware he’s jammed with Dr. John and Fats Domino and Chuck Berry and David Gilmour and Bruce Springsteen. They might even know he once had his own band in the late 1970s, Sea Level, named for the stenciled I.D. on his touring equipment, “C. Leavell.”

If you’ve seen 20 Feet from Stardom or Muscle Shoals or The Wrecking Crew, you know that sidemen and studio pros are a big part of the magic of recorded history. And a big reason the Rolling Stones are still rocking well into their fifth decade is because of Leavell, the resident piano maestro. “We’re here to rock,” he declares. “We’re here to take names and kick ass.”

On this hour, however, Leavell finds himself waiting at the security gate for the bomb-sniffing dog to show up. He’s sanguine about it as he gives the stray fans, who have arrived 10 hours before showtime, a thumbs-up. “Everybody wants to get backstage,” he observes, scanning the parking lot.

In the Stones’ heyday, writers like Stanley Booth and Robert Greenfield of Rolling Stone, photographers Robert Frank and Annie Leibovitz, celebrities and socialites like Truman Capote and Lee Radziwill, went on tour with the band and documented every sordid detail of the rock-and-roll dream/nightmare, hanging out in hotel rooms with Mick Jagger and Keith Richards, doing drugs and having affairs and publishing it all in books and magazines, even throwing in apocryphal and half-true stories for good measure. But this is the ironically titled No Filter Tour in the year 2019, and Jagger, at 76, is very well filtered, turning down interviews and disinterested in discussing, for instance, his 32-year-old girlfriend and their two-year-old son, or the cardiac troubles he had earlier this year, which led to unexpected heart surgery and a two-month delay of the Stones’ U.S. tour. Earlier this year, I called up one of Jagger’s friends, a wealthy socialite named Jean “Johnny” Pigozzi , who spends a lot of time on a yacht. He told me Jagger is “the most disciplined person I’ve ever met in my life,” describing his daily workouts and regular voice lessons, and how he imbibes youth culture from his seven adult kids and his girlfriend and generally avoids old people. “He doesn’t hang out with people his own age, I can tell you that,” he says. “He likes the young women. No geriatric sex!”

Jagger is now a strange figure of modern myth, half Dionysian holy man, half CEO, wrinkled and eternally youthful. But a band is not all about the stars. What the Stones appreciate about Leavell is his lineage, which overlaps with their own: white dudes who obsessed on black blues in the 1960s and speak the same language of Chuck Berry and Muddy Waters.

“There’s a tremendous bond and respect from all of us mutually,” he says. “We talk about those records all the time, and Keith is always listening to music—if you go to his dressing room during a show, there’s always music blaring out. Lately there’s been a lot of Little Richard coming from his dressing room. Charlie [Watts], being the jazz aficionado—sometimes when I’ll be a little early at a sound check or at a rehearsal, I’ll break into a Sea Level song. He’ll say, ‘What’s that, man?’ He appreciates that part of me.”

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By Kara Warner

Leavell playing with Ron Wood on stage during the Rolling Stones Steel Wheels tour in late 1989.

The original source of Leavell’s own piano style is Ray Charles. Seeing him perform at the coliseum in Tuscaloosa, Alabama, in 1966, when Leavell was about 13 years old, changed his life. His older sister, who worked at a record store, took him along at his parents’ request. “We were pretty tight at the time,” he says. “We would pool our money and buy records—mostly British Invasion stuff.” Seeing Charles, along with Fathead Newman on saxophone, Billy Preston on organ, and the Raelettes (which at the time would have included Clydie King and Merry Clayton, the latter a star of the 20 Feet doc) singing backup, “was such a powerful moment for me, man, to see a band that tight, to hear Ray’s voice, to hear his incredible piano playing. He gave Billy a special song and even made the comment, ‘When I’m not around anymore, here’s a young man that I hope will carry on this tradition.’”

“I just left there thinking, Wow, if I could ever be in a band that could move people like that—if I could ever move people like that, that’s what I want to do for the rest of my life.”

“I had already been playing piano,” he says, “but it certainly put a fire up under me. The chord voicing that he would do—I would listen over and over and over to make sure I had it right.”

After that, Leavell got involved in local Macon, Georgia, bands and devoted himself to a Southern-tinged R & B piano style that has since graced albums by everybody from Don McLean to Kitty Wells to the Marshall Tucker Band. He joined the Allman Brothers Band after Duane Allman died in 1971, becoming one of the least drugged-out, and most reliable, members of the band. He backed Gregg Allman before Gregg went into rehab in the late ’70s, and he started his own band, a kind of proto-jam-band fusion thing, with various members of the Allmans, for Capricorn Records. Over the years, he folded in the influences of Leon Russell and Elton John. At loose ends in the early ’80s, Leavell tried out and later joined the Stones as a second keyboard player, working alongside pianist Ian Stewart, “Stu,” who’d actually been an original member of the Stones, before even Jagger and Richards. Officially, Stewart was kicked out of the lineup before they made their first record. Unofficially, he hung around. Stewart became a friend and mentor and taught Leavell classic boogie-woogie bass lines from legends like Albert Ammons, Meade Lux Lewis, and Pete Johnson. “We would listen to those records at his house,” he says. “At the time, when I would play those left-hand figures, I was leaving a lot out, and he would say, ‘Wait a minute. Let me show you this.’ He was using all 10 fingers. All five on one hand. He was so good at it—‘Stu, how in the world do you get that left-hand independence and let the right hand go crazy?’ He said, ‘Tie the right hand behind your back.’”

Since then, he’s played on every Stones album except Bridges to Babylon, from 1997, which, naturally, Leavell thinks of as an iffy album. In 2004, he published a memoir called Between Rock and a Home Place that dishes on the drug-damaged world of the Allman brothers and on legends like Chuck Berry (“a prick”), but he’s a model of restraint on the subjects of Jagger and Richards.

Between tours and the Jagger–Richards feuds, Leavell developed other interests, including a passion for forestry and land management. In the early 1980s, his wife inherited roughly 1,000 acres near Macon, Georgia. He farmed yellow pine and built a fancy hunting camp called Charlane Plantation (the name a fusion of his own and his wife’s, Rose Lane, a former assistant to the vice president of Capricorn Records in the ’70s), now about 2,900 acres. Leavell hosts wealthy clients, usually hard-core Stones fans, who hunt quail by day and drink liquor by night while listening to Leavell play piano. “It’s like bringing the audience to you, instead of having to go on tour,” he says.

For the MetLife show, Leavell has brought his entourage from Georgia, including a highly energetic publicist named Dan Beeson ; his agent Buck Williams, who has handled R.E.M. for years; and Leavell’s pal Joel Babbit, a successful advertising and P.R. executive from Atlanta who brought Leavell in as a partner on something called Mother Nature Network, an environment-focused news and lifestyle web company that had a streaming TV program hosted by Leavell that focused on responsible forestry. (One episode was about the wood sourcing for Gibson guitars.) Their hickory-smoked bonhomie can bring to mind a line from the Randy Newman song “Rednecks”—“Hustlin’ round Atlanta in their alligator shoes / Gettin’ drunk every weekend at the barbecues”—but they’re more sophisticated than that.

In some ways, Leavell finds all the sidelines more satisfying, artistically. Being the fifth Rolling Stone is glamorous, but it’s also kind of a middle management job. Leavell has no stake in the Stones organization; he gets a salary, and he doesn’t get too many featured piano parts (“She’s a Rainbow,” originally featuring Nicky Hopkins on organ, being an exception). In the corporate juggernaut that is the Stones empire—the No Filter Tour was managed by event giant Anschutz Entertainment Group (AEG) and was sponsored by the Alliance for Lifetime Income, an annuities trade group—Leavell is a rounding error on the hundreds of millions of dollars the band grossed in 2017 and 2018.

The corporate structure is something for Leavell to ponder. “It’s a difficult position to have a name for,” he admits. “You are contributing. Are you a principal? And a part owner of the company? No, and that’s a role you have to learn to accept.”

Years ago, Jagger gave Leavell a promotion to “musical director.” Leavell had made himself invaluable by assembling what amounts to the song bible that helps the band remember how to play the songs, of which, last count, there are more than 370 . The songbook started when the Stones were all in their 40s, during 1989’s Steel Wheels tour. “In previous tours, the setlist was pretty much the same every night,” says Leavell. “I made it a point to say, ‘Gosh, what a body of work. Let’s dive deep and find some songs.’”

“At that point, I began taking copious notes of arrangements,” he continues. “I began to make chord charts and handwritten notes, and that stayed the same. Through that process, I now have these two huge volumes of notes in plastic sheets, A to Z, arranged, and I became the person—a lot of that I can keep in my head, sometimes I have to refer to those notes.”

He also maintains a database of all the setlists. Before every show, he proposes the next setlist on his MacBook, making sure that they don’t repeat songs from the last date in the same city. Then he emails it to Jagger, and Jagger emails back what he thinks. Leavell, personally, would like to play some of the outlier Stones tunes, like “Can’t You Hear Me Knocking” from Sticky Fingers, but Jagger is strictly focused on hits. “Anything that’s not a rocker, he thinks, Maybe we should have an up-tempo thing,” Leavell says. “It’s the way Mick views working the crowd—he likes the excitement. We’ll have conversations where he says, ‘I noticed that everybody was not looking up and wasn’t engaged, and I want them engaged.’”

Leavell at the Fox Theater in Atlanta Georgia.

Once the setlist is finalized, he explains, “I’ll put it on a thumb drive and go to the tour office and get it printed and take a couple of copies and put them in my back pocket: ‘Mick, here’s what we’ve got.’” For this show, on a Monday in August, the opening song is going to be “Jumpin’ Jack Flash,” and they’ll introduce a wild card, “Harlem Shuffle,” which they haven’t played since 1990 .

More importantly, perhaps, Leavell is tasked with keeping Jagger and Richards from losing their places in the songs, cueing them for solos and endings. He’s like a conductor, making sure Jagger and Richards, who stand 50 feet apart from each other onstage, coordinate. “When I first came in, in 1982, the consistency was not always there,” he admits. “The graph was up and down quite a lot. Now the graph is pretty much a straight line.”

Over the years, he’s brokered a kind of musical détente between Jagger and Richards over the tempo of songs, with Jagger always pushing the tempo up while Richards tried to pull it back. “There have been times when [Keith] made it very apparent that he thought it should slow down a little bit,” he says. “He’ll give me ‘the look.’”

Mainly Leavell keeps his eyes on Jagger. “It’s part of my job to watch almost his every move, because if there’s any question in his mind on a musical issue, I’ve got to be there for him,” he says. “That’s my job. And I want to be there for him. I’m watching him probably more than the audience is.”

“Chuck has been such an integral part of the Stones’ musical path through the years, and always there when you need someone to lean on,” Jagger later comments through his publicist, Fran Curtis. “He also helps me enormously with the way the setlists are compiled and differ night to night. Its been a great pleasure to play with him.” (Richards: “Chuck has been with us for so long that, to all intents and purposes, he is part of the band! A great, versatile musician and a great guy. He is our own Southern Gentleman.”)

The Stones have been working on new material for the last year and a half, and Leavell was involved in the first creative sessions in London. “Mick had some things that were, I would say, 50% or 60% written, and Keith would chime in and say, ‘Look, man, here’s your hook. Let’s focus on that.’ Keith had brought some things to the table, and Mick would make comments. There were a variety of things: some ballads, some medium tempos, some rockers. I didn’t think they had anything completed.”

“As we left, there was a little bit of chatter about working on it some more,” he says. “But Mick has a movie that he’s acting in” ( The Burnt Orange Heresy, directed by Giuseppe Capotondi and costarring Elizabeth Debicki and Donald Sutherland ).

This past spring, the band was rehearsing in Miami when Jagger told his doctor he wasn’t feeling right. Shortly after, Leavell got a call that the tour was off. “All of us—band, crew, staff—mentally had prepared for this tour, had given up time out of our lives to do this tour, and then all of a sudden, the third day comes and you’re summarily dismissed,” he recounts. “It takes a blow to you. You get over it after a few days.”

After Jagger had his operation and recovered, he posted up the famous video of himself prancing in a ballet studio, a signal that Jagger was back. “We went to London, all of us, and started the process all over again,” says Leavell. “The word relief, on everybody’s part—relief that we were able to reconstruct it, relief that Mick was in good shape, and relief that AEG was able to restructure the tour. We were bumping up against the football season. By the hair of our chinny chin chin did we get the stadiums, and that was fortunate.”

Backstage, Leavell shares a makeshift lounge made from metal piping and canvas drapes with the bass player, Darryl Jones. It’s a couch and some light snacks laid out. The principals are on the other side of the stadium in their own private rooms, and you need the highest-level access pass to get back there. Leavell and I head to the Rolling Stones’ staff cafeteria, which is a catered buffet where grips and technicians and the five tour doctors on the Stones’ payroll can make their own salads and talk shop. The Stones are now a corporation, and this is the corporate campus. Afterward, Leavell takes me into the empty stadium and onto the MetLife stage, where all the instruments are laid out for the band’s sound check at 2 p.m. Here are the maracas that Jagger uses for “Sympathy for the Devil.” Charlie Watts’s drum kit is still covered in canvas. Near the stage right entrance, Ron Wood ’s guitars are lined up in an open crate. On stage left sits Richards’s two Fender Twin amplifiers, tan-colored and beaten up, and his ashtray is conveniently mounted to Watts’s drum riser. Leavell turns on his keyboards and plays the piano riff to “Sympathy for the Devil.” Jagger’s view from the stage is vast and, for a moment, gazing out over the arena of 82,500 seats, one gets a sense of the power and the glory he must enjoy from this vantage.

Later, in the VIP lounge at MetLife, there’s an open-air cocktail party with a long bar where Rolling Stones fanatics who paid extra get to mill around and wait for something to happen while they sip overpriced drinks. One guy I meet, from Texas, has 17 tattoos of the Rolling Stones tongue logo, each styled with the colors of different countries and U.S. state flags; he got them after his divorce three years ago. None of the principals show their faces here, and probably for good reason, but Leavell, being Leavell, graciously receives a few fans for autographs and pictures.

As the show draws near, Leavell heads backstage. The crowd thickens, and the stadium seems to swell with expectation. Pot smoke wafts through the air, and Jersey girls rub up against their boyfriends, and large dudes muscle their way to the front with overflowing beers. The sky is clear above the stadium, and then the stage darkens and a big roar goes up. The enormous jumbo screens, which are owned and operated by the Rolling Stones, explode with color and Rolling Stones logos. Jagger bounds onto the stage to the opening chords of “Jumpin’ Jack Flash,” lithe and bouncy in a black and blue silk blouse, a marvel of modern medicine. Richards slices off the chords, half grinning, his overall look reminiscent of Wile E. Coyote after he got blown up by the Road Runner. Watts is imperturbable on the snare. Wood, fresh out of the cafeteria, is spritely and rocking after his recovery from booze a few years ago. Damned if it isn’t the Rolling Stones.

And then there’s Leavell, dressed in black, pounding the keyboards, eyes trained on Jagger, directing, being the musical director, the fifth Stone.

He feels lucky, aboard one of the last, true rock-and-roll mother ships from the faraway 1960s. I remember what he told me earlier that day: “Everybody is happy just to be able to do this,” he had said. “There’s a sense that this doesn’t go on forever. How does it end? Nobody knows.”

Special Correspondent

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COMMENTS

  1. Steel Wheels/Urban Jungle Tour

    The stage was designed by Mark Fisher with the participation of Charlie Watts and Mick Jagger. Lighting design was by Patrick Woodroffe. Canadian promoter Michael Cohl made his name buying the concert, sponsorship, merchandising, radio, television, and film rights to the Steel Wheels Tour. It became the most financially successful rock tour in ...

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  3. When the Rolling Stones Returned for the 'Steel Wheels' Tour

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  4. The Rolling Stones's 1989 Concert & Tour History

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  5. Steel Wheels · Story Of The Album

    This was also the album that helped heal the long standing rift between Mick Jagger and Keith Richards. Keith Richards Interview Clip 1. ... Eventually a deal was struck with Cohl and what would be known as the Steel Wheels/Urban Jungle Tour would go on to be a game changer on many levels for the Rolling Stones, as well as becoming the most ...

  6. The Rolling Stones American Tour 1981

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  10. Rolling Stones Steel Wheels Tour

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  11. Looking Back 25 Years Ago At The Time The Rolling Stones Started The

    The tour's name was derived from their new album, which was dubbed "Steel Wheels". The album was launched two days prior to the start of the tour. Earlier that year, Richard and Jagger patched things up and then continued to write and record songs that exemplify the feel of the "Classic Stones". Meanwhile, Jagger at the time was being ...

  12. Tour

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  13. 1989 Tour with the Rolling Stones and Mick Jagger

    Clip from Living Colour's Time Tunnel VHS video about the band opening slot on the Rolling Stones' 1989 Steel Wheels tour. Featuring Mick Jagger.

  14. Steel Wheels

    Steel Wheels is a studio album by the English rock band the Rolling Stones, released on 29 August 1989 in the US and on 11 September in the UK. It was the final album of new material that the band recorded for Columbia Records.. Hailed as a major comeback upon its release, Steel Wheels is notable for the patching up of the working relationship between Mick Jagger and Keith Richards, a ...

  15. Steel Wheels/Urban Jungle Tour

    The stage was designed by Mark Fisher with the participation of Charlie Watts and Mick Jagger. Lighting design was by Patrick Woodroffe. Canadian promoter Michael Cohl made his name buying the concert, sponsorship, merchandising, radio, television, and film rights to the Steel Wheels Tour. It became the most financially successful rock tour in ...

  16. The Rolling Stones

    The Rolling Stones - Steel Wheels The Album Of The Tour. More images. Label:CBS - 465752-1, CBS - 465752 2, CBS - 465752 4, Rolling Stones Records - 656122 6, CBS ... Shaker - Mick Jagger. Percussion - luis Jardin* Piano, Organ - Chuck Leavell. Backing Vocals - Bernard Fowler, Lisa Fischer, Sarah Dash. Bass - Bill Wyman ...

  17. Mick Jagger 1989 interview

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  21. Mick and Keith—And Chuck: The Rolling Stones ...

    Leavell playing with Ron Wood on stage during the Rolling Stones Steel Wheels tour in late 1989. By Paul Natkin/Getty Images. The original source of Leavell's own piano style is Ray Charles.

  22. Experience the Rolling Stones

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  24. List of Rolling Stones band members

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